Editorial: A looking glass view of political intrusion

On the first anniversary of Donald Trump’s inauguration, the president indeed behaves like a one-year-old. But behind the embarrassing tweets, foul language and regular White House hissy fits lurks a clear strategy to reshape American politics and culture.

On Friday, Trump warmly addressed the annual Washington March for Life anti-abortion rally via video link, pledging to work to undo hard-won access to abortion.

Well, thank goodness we live in Canada, you might conclude, where our leader feels differently. Not so fast. Canadians face a looking-glass version of the shift taking place in the U.S.: a prime minister leveraging the abortion issue by stealth to make people sign on to his version of Canadian values.

Justin Trudeau’s government has changed the requirements for organizations seeking grants from the Canada Summer Jobs program, which creates temporary employment for young people. In order to access funding, groups now must agree to respect women’s reproductive rights, including the right to abortion (spelled out in the guidance document with the application).

Faith groups that oppose abortions say they can’t meet this requirement. This, in turn, means some religious institutions won’t be hiring many young people this year.

Opposing abortion isn’t illegal, and most of those who hold anti-abortion views sincerely seek a better world. Like capital punishment, or assisted dying, abortion is an issue about which intelligent people are often deeply divided. Political parties may have their own membership rules — the federal Liberals, for instance, require their candidates to support choice — but when governments dole out public money, they have no moral right to shut out taxpayers or organizations that do not endorse their values.

The change to the Canada Jobs Grant program was brought to light by the faith organizations affected, not by the government, some of whose members are now claiming the requirement doesn’t mean what the language says it means. How Kafkaesque.

Is it unfair to draw a Trudeau-Trump analogy on this issue? If the Trudeau government has overstepped, isn’t it only a minor transgression? No. Trump, in his bumptious fashion, at least acknowledges overtly that there are differing views; he wants his side to win. The Liberals acknowledge no divide; they assume — or act as if — their values are everyone’s values. That’s insidious and dangerous.

We don’t want access to abortion curtailed in Canada. But we don’t want government arrogance to dictate what we must think about it, either.